SILLY LITTLE GODS

Hello. My name is Carrie, and I have an obsessive personality. It is possible for me to merely like things, but I usually love things. If I listen to one song by a band and really, really like it, I look up their discography and the band members’ information shortly after. If I really like an actor, I look them up on IMDB. If an episode of a television show I like is on, I’ll watch it even though I’ve seen it countless times (which is why I can quote Friends, Family Guy, and SpongeBob so easily). I read three books by Colum McCann in less than one year from discovering him and fully intend to read more by him. He’s only one example of a few authors I adore.

As you can imagine, it’s quite profitable for me to love something or someone. I don’t really want to think about how much money certain people have because of me.

It’s always been fairly evident to me that this is just how I operate, and it took me a while, but I finally made my peace with it. The fact that I obsess over things used to make me feel isolated, but then I realized that there a lot of people who obsess over things, although maybe not as much as me or maybe even more. Yeah, I’ll watch any movie with Tom Hardy in it or preorder an album by The 1975 in a heartbeat, but there are people who chain smoke and other people who legitimately cannot put down their cell phones to interact with people in front of them.

We all have things we obsess over. We all have things we worship that simply aren’t worth it.

And we know they’re not worth it because when we see other people worshipping their gods, we think about how crazy they are.

“I don’t understand why he’s so into that football team. They’re not even that good,” said the guy who can’t get off of Facebook.

“Alcoholics are so sad and pathetic,” said the woman wearing her favorite, expensive makeup.

“I would hate to see her credit card bill. She’s always shopping,” said the man who’s planning on skipping lunch and working overtime today.

But our gods never look silly to us. In fact, they often don’t even look like gods. We just think they’re these cool gifts from God, which is true, but we don’t realize that we’ve made them so much more than that.

It’s evident to me that, as a whole, people are looking for God. They might not know that’s who or what they’re looking for, but they are. We’re all looking for something to fill and fulfill us. We’re looking for something to give this life meaning, to make us want to keep on living.

A lot of people recognize that God is the One who will be all of that for us. Good for us, right? I’m sure if you’re quiet enough you can hear the applause we’re getting for being so correct.

But wait. Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. Yeah, we believe that God is the answer, but we don’t usually take Him as He is for all that He is.

What I mean is that there are parts of God that maybe seem a little less than awesome to us. There are pieces of God that we pick out and put away because we don’t really like them. Maybe it’s the fact that He’s so powerful. Or how He tells us that we can serve Him and only Him. Or how He tells us to love absolutely everyone. Maybe it’s that He tells us to leave the judging to Him instead of doing it ourselves. Then again, it could be something entirely different.

Regardless of what quality or qualities it is, what happens is we ignore those parts of who God is and we act like they don’t exist.

We think we’re just living blissfully and serving an awesome God when really what we’re doing is watering God down and worshipping an inaccurate representation of God.

We have this image of who we want God to be and we try to make Him just that, but that’s not how it works. He’s not a doll for us to dress up or down however we want. He isn’t a painting where we can make Him look however we want. He is the Creator of everything, and He’s not going to change no matter how much we want Him to.

It’s very unfair for us to only accept parts of God, especially since He loves us exactly as we are.

Think about it. There are parts of you that don’t fit God’s standards, but that doesn’t stop Him from loving you as you are. The difference is, we can change, and if we give God the chance, He’ll change us.

God is perfect. There may be moments when we feel hurt by Him or even ignored by Him that cause us to not see it that way, but He is perfect. He doesn’t change because He doesn’t need to. If we are having problems seeing it that way, the issue is on our end, not His.

God is so much more than we can imagine and understand. That’s just how it is. He is an infinite God, and we have finite minds. God is so intimidating, which makes some of us uncomfortable. We want a God who is personable, who we can really talk to, who really gets us. I would argue that is one reason why Jesus, who is God, came to Earth. He came not only to save us, but to get even closer to us. God walked among us in human form. Trust me, He understands us.

We also want a God who won’t punish us, but the catch is that if God didn’t punish us, He wouldn’t truly love us. We want the love and affection without the pain and consequences, but that can’t happen. True love will always leave you better off for it. A lot of times, that means being held accountable and facing up to what you’ve done. God’s love is no different. Yes, He’ll forgive you, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. When we need forgiveness, regardless of what it’s for, we’ve hurt someone. If we’ve hurt no one else, we’ve hurt God. And that certainly deserves some form of punishment.

When we learn to see God as He really is, we get the full effect of who He is and having a relationship with Him. Omnipotent and loving. Powerful and gentle. A God of war and a God of peace. A God who gets angry and jealous and a God who holds us in such high regard that He came to die for us. A God who is sometimes quiet when you want Him to be loud and a God who would never dream of leaving you.